Pow! Splat! Barnes & Noble in Comic Book Brawl with Amazon

Amazon was very pleased with itself last month when it announced that 100 titles from DC comics would be available in digital format exclusively from Amazon. Barnes & Noble, purveyor of the color Nook, was less delighted. Was this any way for DC Entertainment to treat an old friend? Especially one that announced an expansion of its comics section earlier this year? So now B&N made a nasty little decision of its own.

Comics web site Bleeding Cool reports that in retaliation Barnes & Noble has pulled all print copies of DC comic collections from its shelves, includingWatchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Sandman and V For Vendetta. We would prefer that Amazon and B&N just got on a boat to fight it out the old fashion way, by throwing cats at each other, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Comments

As I have seen asked on other articles about this, if B&N won’t offer the physical copies of any books it cannot distribute in ebook, why haven’t they pulled all of the Harry Potter books from their shelves? Rowling is going to distribute the ebook versions exclusively through her own website, so if B&N doesn’t want to be proven to be hypocritical on their “big stand”, they need to yank the Potters as well as the DC comics.

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